Melissa Chen is a newly appointed New York editor at the Spectator USA. She joins us from her trip to London to talk about her new role as editor-in-chief of The Spectator USA and her thoughts on China.
00:04:36.420And it's the way things are evolving is pretty interesting.
00:04:41.260Countries are lining up and taking sides in this, right?
00:04:43.940So Russia, China, there's this new axis, and then there are the new allies.
00:04:50.120And, you know, the question for our time is, well, which side are the people who live in the free societies like we do?
00:04:56.900what where are they going to stand and what is the situation like in china at the moment with
00:05:03.020regards to hong kong well i mean it's so hard to find out what happens in china because it's
00:05:08.280everything is controlled like state media is the only media around um you don't have you have you
00:05:14.660know basically facebook instagram all these social media companies are not allowed in china
00:05:18.680so it's it's unless you know people there and talk to people on the ground it's pretty difficult to
00:05:24.200get any word out um tell us about the hong kong issue like just for anyone who saw a news report
00:05:31.160once three weeks ago and or some people are protesting hong kong just break that down for
00:05:36.220us for anyone who doesn't know anything about it i've been to hong kong a couple of times
00:05:39.680it's a great place and lovely people but that doesn't necessarily mean i know anything about
00:05:43.880it and that would be the case for a lot of people as well so hong kong has been for the past four
00:05:48.260months sort of engulfed in protests um they've they're calling it the pro-democracy protests
00:05:55.320if you are following on twitter those are the hashtags that are trending um and every weekend
00:06:01.280almost you know you have throngs i mean really throngs one in at its peak one in seven hong
00:06:07.440kongers were on the streets um taking to the streets for the most part part peacefully
00:06:13.240protesting but they have been violent escalations every now and then but they are disruptive they
00:06:17.700do disrupt you know train schedules and even sometimes the airport sit-ins um but what they're
00:06:23.700protesting or what they were what it started out was that it it started out as a protest against
00:06:29.300an extradition law that hong kong tried to pass carrie lam eventually who's the exec chief executive
00:06:35.440of hong kong eventually canceled it um because of the protest like several months in it was just
00:06:40.700getting way too crazy and what that extradition law would have allowed was anyone that basically
00:06:46.420China wanted, could be extradited from Hong Kong to face trial in China. And the thing about trials
00:06:53.180in China is that it's pretty much up to the whims of the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP.
00:06:59.620And, you know, if you're a dissident, if you are a bookseller who has been selling sort of,
00:07:06.480you know, books that were not sanctioned, you could just be disappeared and end up in mainland
00:07:12.260China for show trials. That has happened before the extradition law passed. So with it, this now
00:07:17.700allows this to happen under a very legal framework. So this was a clear violation of the treaty,
00:07:24.660the joint, you know, the joint treaty signed between Britain and Hong Kong when, in China,
00:07:29.980when Hong Kong was handed over in 1997, because it was a British colony for so many years along
00:07:35.200with um and macau is another colony as well so in the end um they canceled the extradition law but
00:07:42.560but the protest sort of morphed into something a bit bigger became about wanting universal suffrage
00:07:49.340because it doesn't exist there it became about accountability because the police were actually
00:07:55.380really brutal to the protesters and so they were demanding for for some accountability for that
00:08:00.440And I think there are five core demands of the protesters.
00:08:05.580One of them is actually not about independence.
00:08:09.180So it's got nothing to do with actual independence.
00:08:11.780The Chinese state media will call it a separatist movement.
00:08:15.300It is not because it's not one of the five core demands.
00:08:18.160In fact, I think the only people that are saying that are people buying into the apologetics of the Chinese Communist Party.
00:08:26.500and do you think part of the problem is well a lot of the problem is is the fact that until 1997
00:08:33.340hong kong was part of you know they had freedom essentially they they did and in fact one of the
00:08:40.820first pieces i i wrote about this was actually for ariel magazine um helen pluckrose was my
00:08:46.460very gracious editor and a former guest of us yeah exactly and i wrote about how because at the time
00:08:53.440you know the when the protests first started kind of people were very confused because well the
00:08:58.620western media was very confused or they didn't seem to know how to address this but the hong
00:09:02.880kong protesters were waving the british flag the union jack they were waving the american star
00:09:07.240spangled banner and they were singing the national anthem and to see you know the former in the
00:09:14.880inhabitants of a former colony raise a colonial flag was very jarring to woke eyes right of our
00:09:21.380time so it was it was confusing and i wrote an article about how post-colonial theory um kind of
00:09:29.940affects how we see the the protesters and and their plight and you know the fact that
00:09:36.580we can't really process that right now in in modern terms at least in the west western media
00:09:43.360um and and that if it wasn't for the british legacy there would be nothing to protest about
00:09:50.840Right. So that is one of the complications of this. I mean, to even talk about maybe one of the things that British rule brought to Hong Kong that was worth holding on to, which is a point that's very difficult to make today because decolonization movement and everything.
00:10:08.200And that scene is just something that was a very nasty period in human history, and there's no other way to look at it. Zero. But here was a bit of a contradiction that the protesters were holding up a symbol of freedom. And had it not been for British common law brought through colonial rule, that they would not be fighting for the very thing that they are fighting for now.
00:10:33.880and the interesting thing about you talk about the empire actually one of the great
00:10:37.880ironies of this whole deep post-colonization all this stuff is that britain actually has a great
00:10:44.480relationship with its former colonies many of them and people in many of those countries have
00:10:49.860a tremendous amount of affinity and a sense of loyalty and common purpose and common values
00:10:56.200with britain right and hong kong is great i have so many i play a lot of basketball i have so many
00:11:01.080friends from hong kong that they're big fans uh but i i think hong kong and some of the other
00:11:05.880things you've written about which is the nba which we'll get on to um they're kind of like
00:11:10.700test cases on the west's willingness to stand up what's right versus stand up for what's comfortable
00:11:18.820or for what's economically advantageous right right exactly so uh characterized for us the
00:11:26.220u.s and perhaps the western response to what's been happening in hong kong has have to have the
00:11:30.580british american government's been strong enough in supporting those people have they supported
00:11:35.520them at all um i would say that what's interesting about the hong kong issue is that it is one of the
00:11:40.760rare issues that drew bipartisan support in congress at least lip service right right so you
00:11:45.900had even senator elizabeth warren coming out and supporting the hong kong protesters and you know
00:11:51.520so are many people on the right like marco rubio so there is at least consensus verbally but in
00:12:00.040terms of passing resolutions or supporting the trade war there's a bit of a divide um i think
00:12:07.380i think the left is definitely um more critical about the trade war whether is it whether it is
00:12:14.280because it's trump perpetuating it i don't know because it's one of those things where i do
00:12:19.680remember a time when the democrats were a lot more in favor of protectionist trade policies
00:12:24.860whereas you see the flip where now the the conservatives are actually very pro-trade war
00:12:31.120that we need to do this to sort of stem china's power it's going to hurt them more than us this
00:12:37.120is an issue of national security and therefore we should prioritize national security over
00:12:42.300economics over what's going to be comfortable we're going to lose probably you know jobs gdp's
00:12:47.840economic growth is going to be sluggish because of it but it's a worthwhile trade-off because
00:12:52.780this is a national security issue so that's where the right stands on the trade war um and of course
00:12:58.580trump supporters are just all in you know and if you talk to well i have friends that are
00:13:04.460journalists and some of them talk to farmers up in the midwest um they said that many midwesterners
00:13:10.740who grow soybeans know that well because of the trade war china's not going to be buying them
00:13:15.380but they kind of see that as a necessary bullet to bite um which is which is interesting to see
00:13:22.040that kind of response. And this is a term that I always hear bandied about and people reference it.
00:13:27.620If you were going to explain it in a very clean, succinct way, what is a trade war and what is that
00:13:32.320situation between America and China as of this moment? As of this moment? So the trade war is
00:13:38.100what Trump had implemented was a series of tariffs, some of them incremental, but mostly on
00:13:43.980agricultural products and and other um united states exports uh into into china um and likewise
00:13:52.540he also had tariffs on imports into the united states to protect certain industries make it
00:13:59.920difficult basically for both countries to trade it penalized the theory was that it penalizes china
00:14:05.240more and therefore because it's going to hurt them more that they would come to the bargaining table
00:14:10.160um to talk about other things and and you know trump is always he i mean he in fact he's been
00:14:16.160campaigning um this has been one of his campaign promises that china's been treating us very
00:14:21.080unfairly um also in the labor markets you know we need to push back on them it's been unfair trade
00:14:28.060practices look at the account deficit um so he's been kind of consistent on this actually and the
00:14:33.760fact that he's kind of made this a central piece right now his of his agenda is very much
00:14:39.380consistently in line with what he's been saying even when he was campaigning where it is now is
00:14:44.540that they've kind of agreed not to escalate the the trade war currently so i think the there is
00:14:52.100an agreement between china and the united states um and last i remember that the tariffs that are
00:14:58.900still in place to to be enacted in september and november are still in place but for now the trade
00:15:05.260war scene there seems to be a temporary truce yeah by the time this goes out this could be
00:15:09.740it's just such a quickly evolving situation yeah and any spark like the nba situation could just
00:15:16.320make it worse and that happens so quickly well before we get on to the nba uh i have listened
00:15:22.020to donald trump talk about china quite a bit i've never heard him really say that much about hong
00:15:26.620kong is that because i've been listening to the wrong thing or is it or is it a big issue in his
00:15:31.400in his mind? Well, there was one thing that he did say that, you know, was a very positive
00:15:35.860development for people who are on the Hong Kong side. He said that it would be very bad for China
00:15:41.520if they took any military action against Hong Kong. So if there were troops rolling in or anything,
00:15:47.200there was a bit of a warning that it would be bad for China. What that meant, no one knows,
00:15:52.960but it was a tweet as usual. I'm sure it was well considered. Right. So I think a lot of people are
00:15:59.980disappointed that he couldn't say anything more but on the other hand i understand that he has to
00:16:04.020you know consider a lot of jobs i mean i wish he could be far more forceful than he has been
00:16:09.440um and and sort of pushing for things on the on the hong kong supporter side but at the end of
00:16:16.020the day hong kong's going to go back to china 2047 officially that one country two systems that's
00:16:22.980going to be abolished in 2047 what is really the end game for the people of hong kong i mean
00:16:28.000it's you know the longer this draws out really it's China's advantage just because of the terms
00:16:33.480of the treaty and what's going to happen either way so it's it's hard to see what what the goal
00:16:40.220is there I guess what is highlighted to the world is the reality of what China is correct and China's
00:16:46.860huge power which is where we come to the NBA because for anyone who didn't follow this story
00:16:51.000Daryl Morey who's the general manager of the Houston Rockets made a comment supporting the
00:16:57.260protesters in hong kong yeah he just tweeted a photograph and the photograph said stand for
00:17:02.040freedom fight with hong kong right or fight for freedom stand with hong kong and the the nba
00:17:07.080immediately i don't think they censored him but they certainly made it clear that they didn't
00:17:12.500support that message they pulled back they apologized to the chinese people yao ming the
00:17:18.200famous chinese basketball player who used to play for the houston rockets ended his relationship
00:17:22.960you know you had other players who play for the Houston Rockets now apologizing to China
00:17:27.960and Steve Kerr who's the coach of the Golden State Warriors talking about how actually America is just
00:17:36.540as bad as China when asked about crazy stuff yeah and what it showed and what it highlighted is
00:17:42.900actually the NBA which is a huge sport in America its American fan base is like a tenth of the size
00:17:51.620of its fan base in china so many american even entertainment industries now are beholden to
00:17:58.400china that is the power that china now wields over us right and you've written quite a bit about this
00:18:04.480right um there are many ways that china's infiltrated um and is able to influence our
00:18:09.880economic systems even academia it's pretty scary um but uh you know but tell us more about that
00:18:16.080Well, I mean, the thing was historically, the thinking was that as China, you know, liberalized its economy and introduced market reforms and got more wealthy and we started engaging with trade, in trade with them, that eventually they'll have no choice, especially with the Internet.
00:18:34.040they're they're going to have to open up you know once new ideas kind of reach their shores and
00:18:40.100along with rising affluence because of of market reforms that China's just going to allow political
00:18:46.380freedoms to to creep back in and slowly open the country up that by far was was one of the
00:18:53.700wrongest bets of our time I mean if we look back probably in the last maybe 20 years that was
00:18:58.580probably the worst calculation we could have made um not only did it not pan out it it got worse i
00:19:04.420think china has built a system that is semi-capitalist it's state capitalist for sure
00:19:11.140but it remained autocratic in almost every other facet of life but now it has technology to to to
00:19:18.860almost make that you know authoritarianism even more efficient and even more totalitarian because
00:19:26.540technology is just this great enabler. And now, which is what the NBA issue has been showing and
00:19:32.380other things like its control of Hollywood, it's exporting that to the United States. I mean,
00:19:37.760that's the scary part. It's that they're able to influence from afar what people beyond their
00:19:46.700borders can think, can say. I mean, the fact that they could get Daryl Morey to kind of make this
00:19:55.120follow-up groveling tweet that oh you know what this is just one perspective out of uh many
00:20:00.800interpretations of the hong kong event and and that was just such a you know it's just terrible
00:20:05.980to see because you know where he stands it was pretty clear where he stood before and now this
00:20:12.140poor guy had to basically backtrack because of business implications to to his team um which
00:20:19.380were huge i mean they're not insignificant i think every single chinese sponsor pulled out of the
00:20:23.780houston rockets the cctv canceled the uh their games the broadcast i like how the chinese national
00:20:30.540broadcasting system is called cctv by the way yeah people have said that yeah um and and tencent
00:20:38.020which was you know basically in a contract with the nba for 1.5 million dollars over five years
00:20:44.100to digitally stream the games canceled the screening of the pre-season games and and then
00:20:49.460you had shoe companies pulling out and it's just it was a whole boycott i mean talk about cancel
00:20:55.360culture this was the ultimate cancel culture right and and even nike stores in china were
00:21:01.400pulling nba and rockets merchandise and it's like this is nike you know you have your american
00:21:07.900company have some i mean for lack of better word balls don't let china neuter the west it's it's
00:21:15.180kind of ridiculous well it's easy to hate trump isn't it when you're when you're a woke company
00:21:20.260right and exactly so nike's like that but so was the nba to some extent the nba previously had
00:21:26.780used the all-star game in in north carolina that was going to be um played in charlotte north
00:21:33.700carolina to pressure the north carolina government to to sort of do something with the bathroom bills
00:21:39.340like to introduce gender neutral bathrooms and the nba has always been in a way i mean to their
00:21:47.820credit i think um allowed its players to speak up whatever it was politically right so you had
00:21:55.000players like lebron james um and others like even steph curry who had been critical of the president
00:22:00.320they never wanted to go to the white house if they won um the championship but they were critical
00:22:05.660all about the united states for race relations inequality and things like that and they spoke
00:22:10.360out even the coaches steve well lebron called donald trump a bum right yeah exactly yeah
00:22:15.640um well but obama also called kanye a jackass before i remember that
00:22:19.300yeah but there's more i mean steve kerr has been outspoken on gun control
00:22:24.820immigration immigration both him and greg popovich have talked about race stuff exactly
00:22:30.400So the NBA has allowed people to speak, but the moment China pops up, suddenly...
00:22:52.380But when it came to China, it actually cost them, and that's where they failed.
00:22:58.140i mean to the credit of adam silver at least the commissioner he seemed to at least say
00:23:02.120we're not going to sanction the rockets they're allowed to say whatever they want
00:23:07.200that's what adam silver said in a press conference however the official apology
00:23:11.860the official tweet after the nba by the nba themselves their statement was frankly for me
00:23:18.820left left much to be desired because it was kind of different in chinese and english
00:23:24.580and the chinese tweet yeah came out a lot more aggressive saying apologizing for hurting the
00:23:30.700feelings of the chinese people um and said that moray's comments were extremely inappropriate
00:23:36.000so there was a lot more uh they definitely took a value stand against against what moray said and
00:23:44.720and then also acknowledged that it hurt the you know feelings of the chinese people and that just
00:23:50.700reminds me of the kind of sort of landscape we have to navigate here where offense is basically
00:23:57.880enough for us to kowtow to outrage culture this is outrage culture but the consequences are much
00:24:05.480bigger well it's the work neither the work movement nor the chinese like freedom of speech
00:24:10.420do they really can you imagine uh hurting 1.4 billion people's feelings yeah you think we people
00:24:16.620get upset with us when we're on stage we say something controversial i know it's a type of
00:24:20.840reach we can only dream but that's the thing that the chinese government does is it's it's that it
00:24:25.800tries to present the obviously it presents the chinese people as completely monolithic
00:24:30.340and with control of media of everything they can read and access and entertainment
00:24:36.160you get something pretty close to that you know you get something pretty close to this
00:24:41.420complete uniformity of thought complete conformity and if you don't you get sent to a re-education
00:24:46.020account. Exactly. Yeah. Or you just disappear. Or you just disappear. Yeah. So what is life like
00:24:53.100for an average citizen in terms of, let's say, living in somewhere like Beijing, Shanghai?
00:24:57.940What are they allowed to do? And what are they sort of not allowed to do when it comes to things
00:25:03.280like freedom of speech, expressing your point of view, everyday things? So for starters, I would
00:25:08.500say that in general, Chinese people and culture is pretty pragmatic. So if you look at Maslow's
00:25:14.760hierarchy of needs if you have your first few tiers met and met pretty well because of all
00:25:21.480the affluence in china nothing else really matters um it's materialistic uh you basically
00:25:28.220are working to to you know i mean look at look at the luxury market it's conspicuous consumption
00:25:34.300in china you basically in like certain you know small locus of of of baby beijing or shanghai you
00:25:41.440have countless Louis Vuitton like you know I don't know why a small area needs four Louis Vuitton
00:25:45.800stores but there it is and and that says something you know about about what people value and chase
00:25:52.420after and also why the luxury brands actually kowtowed to China a lot Dolce & Gabbana and
00:25:59.580recently I think it was Versace had to apologize because I think they had they listed cities that
00:26:04.820they were in or countries that they were in and they listed China and Taiwan and Macau separately
00:26:09.260and china said excuse me those are all china so get rid of that and they did but life there is is
00:26:18.020you know i mean there's a huge middle class and and people are only starting to get used to new
00:26:23.720money um they eat well they enjoy you know it's a good life i mean a huge disparity by the way
00:26:29.180between the cities and not cities huge um and that is often overlooked because everyone thinks of
00:26:35.620China is this future, but there is a huge, you know,
00:26:38.220futuristic kind of like beautiful skyscrapers,
00:26:40.520but there is a huge disparity between the rural and the city folk.
00:26:45.840But the only thing that you can't do is not criticize the government.
00:26:49.680Not, you know, there's, it used to be that there were the three Ts.
00:26:54.360So you couldn't say Tiananmen, you couldn't say Tibet.
00:26:59.040And the last T was, I can't remember now, Taiwan, sorry.
00:27:02.800and now of course that the three t's have grown into other things um that they are sensitive
00:27:09.100for example winnie the pooh cannot be said or referred to because um xi jinping who is now
00:27:16.480leader for life a ruler of the communist party um somebody had kind of pointed out that he
00:27:22.740bore a striking resemblance to winnie the pooh so now all references to winnie the pooh
00:27:29.040on on weibo on wechat any anything in china is now scrubbed which is why if you watch the latest
00:27:37.560south park episode i i don't want to have i don't want to reveal any spoilers but
00:27:43.140winnie the pooh features quite a bit yeah and they really went after china they really did yeah
00:27:49.060it reminds me of that the dictator in turkmen as i think it's turkmenistan yes he renamed all
00:27:55.440the months after his mother after his mother named the son after his dad and then he gave each day of
00:28:01.680the week like a new name just felt like it yeah but you know i mean we joke about him and i kind
00:28:08.420of listened to you talk about it and i mean what we're talking about essentially is a country that
00:28:13.720is run by a life-appointed dictator that imprisoners imprisons political dissenters
00:28:20.920that in many cases harvests their organs for donors we there are some reports of this
00:28:26.880that is projecting its power through spy networks through cyber warfare yeah through business as
00:28:33.700we've just talked about around the world it puts uyghurs correct in concentration camps
00:28:39.400all of these things are happening and really until about a month ago very few people were
00:28:46.860talking about correct and i guess my question is is that because doing business with china
00:28:53.180has been so good for what you might call the globalist elite that it was really well they
00:28:59.980were fine with that they didn't have a problem until china started becoming a problem as it has
00:29:03.880been more recently i think there are a few factors one is i mean china i think xi jinping only got
00:29:09.920um his term really got extended to eternity only in 2017 so that was a more recent i think china
00:29:16.220of the congress that gathered in 2017 was kind of the the period where where it woke most people
00:29:23.340in government up to at least like okay they're remaining on this autocratic path since then
00:29:29.240they've become more belligerent in terms of territorial disputes um claiming you know
00:29:34.540islands and and well building areas yeah in the south china sea which has really angered many
00:29:40.380regional um countries so philippines vietnam singapore are really angry about about what's
00:29:46.880happening in their corner of the world because well they can directly see china's increasing
00:29:52.720ambitions and are very wary of that um and i think since then you know slowly there's been
00:30:00.620an awakening but it's it was kind of remain in the political realm it wasn't really until i think
00:30:06.800like you said hong kong that look that many people really started paying attention to
00:30:12.320all the broader issues that there might be another reason why you know people were hesitant to sort
00:30:19.400of diss on china i think it was partly a fear of being racist um i you know if had it been um russia
00:30:28.100doing the same things no no qualms there to criticize russia yes rasophobia big problem
00:30:34.840Right, right. And it's also, it's easier for Western countries, white countries to be criticizing fellow white countries than it is to be critical about, you know, this is the problem with the rubric of seeing everything through people of color and intersectionality.
00:30:50.760By the way, are Chinese people people of color?
00:30:54.020Asian Americans are not now, but I think...
00:31:10.360They absolutely play the victimhood culture.
00:31:12.640So if you go to school in China, you are taught from a young age through their state and forest education about the opium wars, about the hundred year humiliation, about how the West made China sell Macau and Hong Kong.
00:31:29.280And so that's why returning Hong Kong was such a big FU to the past.
00:31:34.480So they do play up their, you know, their humiliation at Western powers hands because they want to try to drum up patriotism because once they do that, I mean, think about like if you built like a UMA, a Chinese UMA, which was also a subject of another piece that I wrote for Spectator, where basically it's like a hive mind.
00:31:53.840all you need to do is just press the button of patriotism and like the chinese zombies will just
00:31:59.540rise and just attack and just you know embrace come to the same position and now the government
00:32:05.500has unilateral um power to basically do what they want and what do you think is going to be the
00:32:12.960chinese program in the coming years can you just see them wanting to expand their power base
00:32:17.380yeah and get their tentacles as widely spread as possible yeah and they're going i mean especially
00:32:22.920through technology they you know with if silicon valley does not act on principle and i'm worried
00:32:29.560about that it's going to get worse um you we're already worried about censorship on social media
00:32:35.600platforms but once they're in bed with china or have chinese investment how are they going to act
00:32:41.820right you know and and i think my biggest worry is actually ai it's china is spending if you look
00:32:48.240get in all the areas where china's putting money on and in um ai they're outspending the u.s
00:32:54.680in terms of investing and developing the technology ai companies and what's going to happen when that
00:33:01.640technology really becomes ripe is they're going to have first dibs and the power to you know
00:33:08.600effectively either export their techno surveillance state to to the rest of the world it's interesting
00:33:16.060to me because we've had Dr. Pippa Malmgren on the show, who's a former advisor to two U.S.
00:33:20.560presidents, a good friend of ours. We had Jim Reichard on the show recently talking about some
00:33:25.480of this. The more we talk to people, the more terrifying it is. And the more I kind of look at,
00:33:32.000you know, Steve Bannon's obviously very controversial figure, but I've listened to a few
00:33:35.300of his interviews about China and about the need for economic nationalism, about the need to
00:33:41.420protect america and i'm like well i can see why people are going over to that side of things
00:33:47.960because it is a really serious threat to our way of life isn't it it is and i think trump has
00:33:54.120expanded what he calls the national innovation um security base so he's actually starting to
00:34:01.320expand like the the kinds of companies in which he's considering um you know sort of preventing
00:34:07.120trade between or dealings between or at least having more scrutiny on companies with that
00:34:13.700kind of dealings with china um because this is really a rising concern and apart from economic
00:34:21.340sanctions what else do you have military options i mean as far as that goes it's one of those things
00:34:27.020that everyone wants to kind of stay out of and so the only choice left is is really economic
00:34:32.780and china's playing the same game they know that and that's why they're using um think of all the
00:34:38.560propaganda the way that they've really managed to you know infiltrate hollywood because of
00:34:43.580just buying out hollywood studios outright um smuggling their their message into movies and
00:34:52.560because you have buying power you're able to sort of say all right you remember this movie i think
00:34:57.860it was dr strange love yeah oh yeah and there was a monk it was the character in dr strange love was
00:35:03.020a tibetan monk uh played by i'm really bad with actresses and and actors but tilda swinton yeah
00:35:09.980tilda swinton okay eventually was moved she played him because they couldn't have a tibetan monk in
00:35:16.720the story because it's one of the three t's right you're not allowed to talk about tibet and and
00:35:22.440that's just a sensitive issue so her character was written in and kind of changed modified to
00:35:28.040appease chinese censors this has happened so many times i mean i don't know if there's like a website
00:35:33.120cataloging all the ways in which hollywood has count out to china but there should be there
00:35:37.500should be a website cataloging every single company from delta airlines to kwanis airlines
00:35:42.900and marriott hotels who fired people or you know capitulated in the same way because the effect is
00:35:50.100i mean it's growing like the people that are just you know being um sort of victims of of this kind
00:35:57.940of really it's chinese political correctness it's it's you know this is our orthodoxy if you do not
00:36:04.760conform it's well you're going to pay for it somehow and there's been quite a few notable
00:36:11.280examples quite famous examples of chinese celebrities who have disappeared for months on
00:36:17.160end exactly and in particular there was one actress i can't remember her name but she was
00:36:21.160she was in quite a few hollywood films and she just vanished right right and i had a friend of
00:36:25.960mine who was miss world canada um her name is anastasia lynn she's of chinese descent and she
00:36:32.760became very critical of the chinese government she actually was one of the major activists sort
00:36:39.040of bringing attention to the organ harvesting issue and also the treatment of the falun gong
00:36:44.400at the hands of the Chinese government,
00:37:13.260that's exactly what they do i mean say what you want about the west one of the things we don't do
00:37:18.560is is this like we'll go after your family if if you were a dissident so for example edward snowden
00:37:25.220his family's not affected his family's not disappeared and kidnapped and tried and and
00:37:31.620harmed or or hit their livelihoods destroyed and they're not jailed he's responsible for his actions
00:37:37.340only and it ends there right individuals but that's not the case they in in china they use this
00:37:44.780you know if you're if you're a member of the chinese diaspora chances are you're family there
00:37:48.480lucky i don't so i can say what i want but i i couldn't if i had you know one or two relatives
00:37:55.000that were living in china they would absolutely be gone just based on three articles i had written
00:38:00.740so far oh it it's scary it's absolutely scary stuff uh so what what do you think the west
00:38:09.100and the united states particularly needs to do uh in response to this what can the west do now
00:38:14.600i think i mean for i i actually was a huge supporter of the trade war um as we need to
00:38:23.720make china feel the pain economically i know it's going to cause us pain too but it's one of those
00:38:30.660things where if we don't use that i don't know what else the other thing is businesses right so
00:38:35.600not just the government but really businesses need to be more aware of this and and take
00:38:41.120responsibility for for standing on values not surrendering those to profit motives um there
00:38:50.280are other trading partners that we can i know you won't have access to the chinese market but
00:38:54.040i don't think it's worth it i don't think the end result is going to be worth it when all of us are
00:39:00.000sitting in gulags yeah it's i i don't know what price these people are willing to pay or maybe
00:39:05.740they're just trying to kick the can down the road to the next generation to deal with
00:39:09.000but seeing how china runs its own country if you know that that's going to be what's in store for
00:39:17.740the whole world do we want to go there and will we ever accept you know could we have a boycott
00:39:26.120divestment kind of system from china something like that you know but this needs to be talked
00:39:31.740about and and not kowtowing especially to their you know what they're doing with like trying to
00:39:40.060force people like moray to to cancel tweets and to change their minds what south park did by the
00:39:46.660way brilliant we need more of that um in one episode i think more people were educated about
00:39:52.340Chinese influence in Hollywood, Chinese influence everywhere, even the Uyghurs, the plight of the
00:39:57.600Uyghurs were actually featured in a South Park cartoon. And we need more people in the entertainment
00:40:05.180industry to kind of tell these stories, you know, sound the warning bells, and assemble,
00:40:12.820I don't know, an alliance of people that just do not want to live under a world order that China
00:40:17.660controls. I was reading an article recently saying that actually our impression of China
00:40:22.800as being this financial giant isn't strictly true. And there's real significant weaknesses
00:40:28.120in their economy. I mean, is that true? And are they actually grinding to a halt economically?
00:40:34.940Yeah, numbers are hard to trust from an authoritarian country like China, right?
00:40:39.180They fudge things. And also, they're able to use their currency to sort of manipulate how
00:40:45.500things look. I would say the other thing that that I read recently, which sort of supports
00:40:51.620your theory, is that China's a severely aging population. And so by 2033, the number of people
00:40:59.280that are in a certain working age range in the United States is already going to outpace the
00:41:04.840number in China. And so therefore, we don't really have that much to worry about because their
00:41:09.380economy isn't growing or is going to it's not the economic juggernaut that we we thought it was
00:41:15.660um i've heard about that too yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of people who i host the economics
00:41:21.120and comedy festival every year there's a lot of people who come there anything funny about
00:41:24.540economics if you're prepared to laugh at the world ending then yeah um you should be a comedy
00:41:32.220reviewer you would try to hear into everyone's heart is there anything funny about economics
00:41:37.420the dismal science i don't know yeah yeah well she can be a guardian reviewer who doesn't find
00:41:42.380anything funny at all just the brian logan of course but anyway a lot of people there were
00:41:47.840saying essentially what china has done is they've allowed they've created essentially a fake
00:41:53.620amount of money within china which they've then used to create massive capacity over capacity of
00:42:00.520steel production and other things which they then export around the world and as a result of that
00:42:05.880businesses go out of business elsewhere around the place and then they end up being the monopoly
00:42:10.560in that particular field so coming back to this whole idea of economic nationalism it's really
00:42:17.060uh it seems like china has been unapologetically waging an economic war right on the west and
00:42:24.780we've been like oh no free trade is great you know as soon as they get all you know they get their
00:42:29.040car and whatever they'll suddenly chill out and become all democratic and what we've seen in the
00:42:34.040last couple of years it's just absolutely that is not happening i will say that free trade you know
00:42:39.320if it's free trade um china wins if it's fair trade the united states wins that's exactly
00:42:45.140donald trump's message ironically isn't it ironically yeah are you a trump supporter if
00:42:49.560you don't mind me asking um i did not like it when he got into office i absolutely find his
00:42:54.720personality troubling repulsive for me personally but i don't i never i never really support
00:43:03.780candidates or like i don't support things that are like just all right i'm pro hillary or i'm
00:43:09.840pro trump because what if they did something that you agreed with that you know what if trump was
00:43:14.760good on say advancing the cause of lgbt equality then you're gonna because you were anti-trump now
00:43:20.960you have to oppose that which we do see that a lot i'd love to see that tweets that's exactly how
00:43:26.920to be tribal right so i i've always gone by there are things that trump has done i like there are
00:43:33.100Things that I absolutely do not like, especially right now with what he's doing with Kurds and pulling out the military.
00:43:39.580Do not like that, but especially abandoning our allies that helped us to fight ISIS.
00:43:44.860But on China, he's been actually pretty good.
00:43:47.380And I cannot imagine any other president being as strong on China as he has been rhetorically and also just in terms of policy.
00:43:57.420I really like him to say more about Hong Kong and do more, but I'm not sure what that is.
00:44:02.760And if you can't propose a solution, then clearly all the smart people in the White House, you know, are putting their brains together to figure this out.
00:44:11.960And what do you make of this argument that, I mean, and I say this about Russia all the time, the one advantage of a dictatorial system is you have time on your side.